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The TIFF
Dot sits in the Diner, hard at work, talking to her Secretary, who is telling her nothing but bad news. The Secretary informed Dot that the Mitchell Account was late as usual, a download from First National Data Bank was on hold awaiting her imprint, she was late for a board meeting at Fiche and Chips Industries, and that Dot had missed her flight to sector 1101. The call ends and Dot wonders, rather angrily, where Bob and Enzo are. As if on cue, they walk through the door, talking about a circuit race they had. Dot is angry with Bob because Enzo will be late for his Ancient Languages class. Bob, completely cool, says that Enzo can't be like Dot, he needs to learn to have a bit of fun. Dot gets completely put off and a heated argument begins, ending with Bob storming out of the Diner, resolving never to return. Bob is at his apartment, working on his car. Enzo VidWindows him and asks him if he's ever coming back. Bob says he doesn't need Dot or the Diner and is so busy he'll never notice the loss. In reality, he's bored stiff without either of them. So much so, in fact, that he chucks Mike the TV down the garbage chute when he annoys him. Back at the Diner, Dot and Enzo are sitting down, Enzo trying to convince Dot to apologize to Bob. A tear forms out of the central power unit and Dot, determined to take care of it without Bob's help, smacks the tear with one of the Diner stools, nearly making the Diner explode in the process. Enzo is appalled, and gathers a group of binomes to go to the Principal Office to ask Phong for his advise on how to get Bob and Dot to talk to each other. Phong says that "broken friendships are best mended by tragedy or apology." Enzo goes out to set up a tragedy. Bob is fixing his car again when he gets another VidWindow from Enzo, screaming that Megabyte captured him and he's at Pearson's Data Dump, about to be deleted. Bob freaks and goes to the Data Dump. Dot, at the Diner, gets the same message. She goes to the Data Dump as well. At the Data Dump, Enzo has tied himself to the conveyor belt that deletes trash, and Bob and Dot run into each other and start insulting each other before they try to save Enzo. In the end, Frisket saves Enzo and all that happens is Dot smacks Bob with a mean right-hook. Enzo devises another plan. Still fixing his car, Bob gets a house call. It turns out to be a delivery boy delivering a hologram. Bob opens it and Mike the TV appears, introducing the card as a hologram from Holomark, the hologram changes to Dot's form. She starts apologizing in rhyme and asks Bob to meet her at Floating Point Park. Dot gets the same message. However, when the two meet at the park, they quickly realize that neither sent the other a card in the first place. Before they can argue about it, a Game Cube lands. The Game is Starship Alcatraz, and the User has just released all the prisoners. Bob and Dot reboot, but are so busy arguing that they lose the upper hand. They agree to cooperate to save their hides, but are still very tense toward each other. Their stubbornness gets them into a lot of trouble, but they gradually warm up to each other as the Game progresses and eventually manage to win the Game. By the time the Game is over, they are friends again and Bob says he'll come by the Diner again sometime soon. Enzo is confused about their sudden friendly talking. References *The episode title is a pun on the image file format TIFF and the definition of "tiff", also means 'a petty argument'. *This is the first episode where the story line doesn't involve Megabyte or Hexadecimal threatening Mainframe. *Jean-Luc is hiding in the Diner's jukebox. *Dot's VidWindow has the following instructions: 1) Place palm on reader, 2) Make choice, 3) Wait for Door to Open. *One of the VidWindows outside the Diner displays "Marty's Music: Upgrade your sound card". *Bob tells Dot that she "needs to take time to smell the daisy wheels". A Daisy Wheel is a device used to print characters, similar to a Dot Matrix printer. (Actually it is a lot closer to an old fashioned typewriter. The only thing similar is they both use a ribbon.) *Enzo exclaims "COBOL? FORTRAN? They're dinosaurs!", COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages still used today. It was developed in 1959 by a group of computer professionals called the 'Conference on Data Systems Languages'. FORTRAN was an older language originally designed by John W. Backus and developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications. *Bob offends Dot by calling her 'pre-programmed'. To pre-program something is to program in advance; preset. *Dot calls Bob "BASIC" i.e. 'stupid'. BASIC is an acronym for 'Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code', a clear reference to a family of high-level programming languages. The original BASIC was designed in 1963, by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College. After that however, he said "when I look at BASEup in the dictionary, it's you that I see." * In the original ABC airing of the episode as well as the Hasbro owned Power Block weekday afternoon cartoon block; instead of balling a fist and punching Bob, she slaps the side of her hip twice then slaps him (slapping sound heard off camera). *The holographic greeting card was called a 'Holomark' with Mike saying, "When you care enough to project the very best, send Holomark". A clear parody of the Hallmark Cards slogan: "When you care enough to send the very best, use Hallmark." *On the director's clapboard, the number '9404' is seen. This is this episode's production number. *The Game Starship Alcatraz is loosely based off Alcatraz Island where the infamous federal prison with the same name was located in the middle of San Francisco Bay, California, United States. *Bob said "Nah, easy as pi squared." Pi or π (approximately equal to 3.14159) is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry, which is the same as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius. *Dot yelled "You gotta cool it, Game Boy" which was a clear reference to the 'Game Boy' a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo, released in 1989. *Bob told Dot to use her PCU weapon to encase the prisoners. PCU stands for 'Portable Computer Unit'. *When Bob was trying to restore power he said "Main power? Dot, this thing's in Turbo YADDA! Not exactly my first language." This is an allusion to 'Turbo Pascal' which appeared on MS-DOS. Developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership it was a complete development system that includes an affordable compiler and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the Pascal programming language. *Bob states the Prisoner "is in Cell Block H", an allusion to the 1979-1986 TV series "Prisoner" created by Reg Watson. It was broadcast under the title "Prisoner: Cell Block H" within the UK and United States. *After the Game Bob admits "You were the one who saved our bitmaps" A reference to the BMP file format, sometimes called 'bitmap' which is a Microsoft-proprietary image file format used to store digital images. T